Another thing in defense early game for the melee people is to instead of taking the two points on the left, go up one and over to the left one on the right hand side. That gives a flat 2% damage reduction.

You are right about the Assassin though, kinda squishy in comparison. The two percent does help add a little bit of mitigation to the melee Assassin though. Still fun, just not climbing the 150+ difficulty of the Juggernaut (as long as it's not the AoE nightmare of rebels...lol).